Caesar Rodney

Caesar Rodney secured American independence through a grueling 80-mile midnight ride in July 1776. Suffering from asthma and facial cancer, he journeyed from Dover to Philadelphia through a thunderstorm to break the deadlocked Delaware delegation and cast the decisive vote for the Lee Resolution. His act was not a solitary gesture but the culmination of a radical political career, which included organizing Delaware's Sons of Liberty and defying the Royal Governor. Rodney’s image is often reduced to his obscured face on the 1999 Delaware state quarter; his true impact was as a wartime President of Delaware who almost single-handedly financed and supplied the state's militia. That one vote, demanded by his own insistence on unanimity, transformed a fractious congress into a united front. Rodney’s endurance embodies the physical sacrifice underlying the Declaration's philosophical ideals.